Acer Chromebook 13 Promises Battery Life Up to 13 Hours

Acer has just announced its latest Chromebook model, the Chromebook 13, this time promising up to 13 hours of battery life per charge for busy users. That's a lot of time to work, watch movies or explore the Internet on just one charge.

The new device was unveiled by Bill Brougher, a Google engineering director, in an Aug. 11 post on the Google Chrome Blog. Previous models of Chromebooks offered battery life of up to 11 hours.

"Starting today, we're welcoming a new type of Chromebook into the family, beginning with the Acer Chromebook 13," wrote Brougher. "This new device uses the Nvidia Tegra K1 processor, so you get the speed you're used to from Chromebooks with a battery life up to 13 hours."

With 13 hours of charge time, users can work or play on their Chromebook 13 during a flight from New York to Beijing, or they can watch the entire set of Harry Potter movies, he wrote.

The Acer Chromebook 13 can be preordered for $279 at Amazon.com, as well as from other retailers. The new machines include an Nvidia Tegra K1 quad-core 2.1GHz processor; 2GB of DDR3L SDRAM; 16GB of internal storage; a 13.3-inch screen with a maximum screen resolution of 13,366 by 768 pixels, and an Nvidia Kepler graphics processing unit with 192 Nvidia CUDA cores, according to its spec sheet on Amazon.com. The 3.3-pound machine, which is available in Moonstone White, also includes 802.11ac WiFi and two USB 3.0 ports.

In May, Google's Chromebook lineup had a similar expansion as Acer, Asus, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, LG and Toshiba announced their own new machines with a range of Intel Celeron, Core i3 and other CPUs, according to an earlier eWEEK report.

Among the new devices announced in May were Lenovo's N20p Chromebook and Thinkpad YOGA 11e Chromebook, which offered various options for touch-screens and hinge designs; the Asus C200 11-inch Chromebook and the Asus 13-inch C300 Chromebook; a new Dell Chromebook 11; a new Acer C720 Chromebook; and a new 13-inch model from Toshiba. Also announced was a new Chromebox from HP as well as the LG Chromebase, which is the first all-in-one computer running Chrome OS.

The Chromebook line has been continuing to grow over the past year as Google and its partners focus on providing alternative machines in the consumer, business and education markets.

In April, Google and its partner VMware offered $200 Chromebook rebates for Windows XP users who wanted to move to Chromebooks from the now-unsupported, 12-year old Windows XP operating system.

In February 2014, Google announced its first-ever Chromebox for meetings product, which brings together a desktop Chromebox along with Google Apps and Google+ Hangouts to offer an easy way for far-flung businesspeople to hold meetings with participants around the world.

Chromebooks and their desktop brethren Chromeboxes run Google's Chrome operating system and feature a wide range of preinstalled, cloud-based Google services and products, including Google Docs and Google Calendar. Chromebooks allow users to do their work online with less need for on-machine storage for large applications and files.